Centrist

ZAGREB, Croatia - Centrist Stipe Mesic will succeed the late Franjo Tudjman as Croatia's next president after securing a convincing win in a second-round runoff election, the state electoral commission said today. The commission said that after 99.36 percent of the vote from Monday's poll had been counted, 65-year-old Mesic had taken an unassailable lead with 56.21 percent against former Communist dissident Drazen Budisa. Mesic is a former member of Yugoslavia's collective presidency.

President Obama's failure to fully achieve the liberal agenda and remain popular in the process is fueling dangerous radicalization in the oddest of places: the media establishment, which considers itself the guardian of the political center. I should say "the so-called center," because one of those most tedious -- yet meticulously maintained -- fictions is the claim that the establishment is, in fact, "centrist. " If you've ever met these people and talked to them about how they see the world, heard them give a college commencement address, read their books or endeavored to find out the political views of their spouses, you'd have all the evidence you need to learn that the establishment's centrist facade is so much Potemkin poster board.

Centrist Leonel Fernandez, 42, won the presidency of the Dominican Republic by a 2.5 percent margin Monday, succeeding Joaquin Balaguer who is more than twice his age. Fernandez, a lawyer, is the Caribbean nation's youngest elected president and the first for his Dominican Liberation Party. He defeated Jose Francisco Pena Gomez of the center-left Dominican Revolutionary Party by 51.25 percent to 48.75 percent.

NEW YORK -- In a political culture where moderation is the new heresy, centrism is fast becoming the new black. Political outliers -- not quite Republican, not quite Democrat -- are forming new alliances in a communal search for "Home. " Exhausted by extremism and aching for real change, more and more Americans are moving away from demagoguery and toward pragmatism. Soon they may have options. Next month, a new political group, No Labels (www.nolabels.org), will launch in New York City.

PARIS -- Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal reached out Monday to centrist FranM-gois Bayrou for support crucial to her bid to beat conservative front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy in the May 6 runoff. Royal, who had dismissed calls for an alliance with Bayrou before Sunday's first round of voting, said Monday that she was "available" for an open, public dialogue with him.

QUITO, Ecuador - Jamil Mahuad led Ecuador's presidential election after the close of polls on Sunday but was far from the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff in July. An exit poll conducted by a national broadcasting network showed Mahuad, from the centrist Popular Democrat Party, with 31.2 percent support vs. 28.2 percent for banana mogul Alvaro Noboa, who is considered a stand-in for former President Abdala Bucaram, known as ``El Loco.'' He was forced from office in disgrace in February 1997.

Early results of the Dominican Republic presidential election gave a four-point lead to Leonel Fernandez, the centrist candidate of the Dominican Liberation Party, election officials said Sunday. With 14.9 percent of votes counted, Fernandez had 52.57 percent of the vote while Jose Francisco Pena Gomez of the center-left Dominican Revolutionary Party had 47.43 percent. Fernandez and Pena Gomez are campaigning to succeed Joaquin Balaguer, the 89-year-old blind president who has dominated Dominican politics for most of the last three decades.

When Republican Gov. Charlie Crist was elected, a lot of smart money in Tallahassee said Democrat Alex Sink was likely to prove his biggest political challenger -- both on the state Cabinet and possibly in the 2010 governor's race. Instead, Attorney General Bill McCollum last week emerged from the Republican Party's conservative flank to give the new governor his toughest policy fight to date. McCollum lost his duel with Crist on a 3-1 vote, as the governor successfully spearheaded a move by the Cabinet, sitting as the state's Clemency Board, to streamline Florida's cumbersome process of restoring civil rights to felons.

WASHINGTON -- Last week I made the open-and-shut case for John McCain: In a dangerous world entering an era of uncontrolled nuclear proliferation, the choice between the most prepared foreign-policy candidate in memory versus a novice with zero experience and the wobbliest one-world instincts is not a close call. But it's all about economics and kitchen-table issues, we are told. OK. Start with economics. Neither candidate has particularly deep economic knowledge or finely honed economic instincts.

CRISIS ENDS. A five-day crisis in conservative Premier Jacques Chirac's Cabinet ended Sunday, least for the time, after outspoken centrist Culture Minister Francois Leotard decided not to resign. A public dispute flared Tuesday between Chirac and Leotard, who heads the Republican Party, one of five small parties that make up the Union for French Democracy. Chirac thought Leotard too militant in his opposition and challenged him publicly. Leotard's resignation might have led other centrist ministers to quit and forced Chirac to reorganize his government.

WASHINGTON - Marking a major milestone in the drive to overhaul health care, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., unveiled a centrist blueprint Wednesday that promised changes of historic proportions, even though it omitted the controversial "public option." The Baucus proposals, which have already drawn fire from liberals but may serve as a template for eventual compromise in the Senate, would sharply expand consumer protections and for the first time require almost all Americans to have medical insurance.

I'm with the liberals on this one. They're fuming at the self-proclaimed "centrists" in the Senate who've taken it upon themselves to trim the stimulus bill at the edges. Led by Republican Arlen Specter, the centrists have boldly cut (perhaps temporarily) $100 billion or so from the stimulus package, in the name of fiscal discipline. But, as liberal critics such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman rightly point out, they're cutting it to prove their "centrist mojo," not because they have real concern for public policy.

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama has garnered praise from center to right -- and has highly irritated the left -- with the centrism of his major appointments. Because Obama's own beliefs remain largely opaque, his appointments have led to the conclusion that he intends to govern from the center. Obama the centrist? I'm not so sure. Take the foreign-policy team: Hillary Clinton, James Jones and Bush holdover Robert Gates. As centrist as you can get. But the choice was far less ideological than practical.

If presidents are like football coaches, Barack Obama and his new team will be taking over in January on fourth and long. Unless they are ready, they could be buried under the rush of problems awaiting them, starting with the financial meltdown at home and two wars abroad. Mr. Obama has begun lining up his team of White House staff and Cabinet nominees. It's a diverse and accomplished group, loaded with experience. But some choices are better than others. Here's our scouting report on the strengths and weaknesses of some of the players, or possible picks, so far. Rahm Emanuel Mr. Obama raised eyebrows around Washington by choosing Mr. Emanuel, a Democrat who represents Chicago in the U.S. House, to be his chief of staff.

WASHINGTON -- Last week I made the open-and-shut case for John McCain: In a dangerous world entering an era of uncontrolled nuclear proliferation, the choice between the most prepared foreign-policy candidate in memory versus a novice with zero experience and the wobbliest one-world instincts is not a close call. But it's all about economics and kitchen-table issues, we are told. OK. Start with economics. Neither candidate has particularly deep economic knowledge or finely honed economic instincts.

Steve Schale, who directs state House campaigns for the Florida Democratic Party, is a longtime Chicago Cubs fan, so he's had his share of misery. But Schale and his boss, House Democratic Leader Dan Gelber, are getting pumped about another nine. That's the number of seats House Democrats have picked up during the past two years, marking what they say is the biggest legislative gain by either party in Florida in more than 30 years. Democrat Tony Sasso's victory last week in a special election to fill a Republican-leaning House seat in Brevard County is being hailed as a pivotal turning point.

MARCHERS FOR FREE ELECTIONS. Chilean police Saturday arrested more than 100 members of the centrist Christian Democratic Party as they took part in a march to demand free elections. Hundreds of youths organized the demonstration in the city's working class southern neighborhoods. Police arrested scores of them and destroyed their placards, witnesses said. Centrist political parties have led a campaign to pressure President Augusto Pinochet's military government into calling free elections instead of the presidential plebiscite, in which voters will be presented with a sole candidate named by Pinochet's government.

President Lech Walesa on Wednesday nominated a lawmaker with wide support in parliament to become Poland's first woman prime minister. Centrist lawmaker Hanna Suchocka (pronounced soo-KHAHTS-kah), plans to lead a coalition of seven parties descended from the Solidarity movement.

NORMAN, Okla. -- The 2008 presidential sweepstakes took a brief detour Monday as centrist leaders from both major political parties fueled speculation that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will mount an independent bid for the White House. Bloomberg says he's happy in the Big Apple, and on New Year's Eve he told TV personality Ryan Seacrest: "No, I will not run for president, but I will speak out to try to get people to really focus on the issues and to get rid of partisanship and special interests."

Florida's upcoming legislative session on budget cutting ought to be, well, pretty special. The third extra session of the year will occur in an increasingly tense political atmosphere -- with House Speaker Marco Rubio last week blistering fellow Republican Gov. Charlie Crist in print on two separate occasions. The theme under Rubio's byline rang clear: Crist is too liberal. "They're both going to tell you they're great friends," said Senate Minority Leader Steve Geller, D-Hallandale Beach.